Global mapping of burned areas from European satellites: the fire_cci project

This paper presents the results of phase 1 of the fire_cci project. This project is part of the Climate Change Initiative of the European Space Agency, and aims to generate global, long-term burned area maps from European sensors (VEGETATION and MERIS). This information is intended to help modelling efforts of climate and atmospheric and carbon scientists, by adjusting to their needs in terms of product specifications. The project has done an extensive effort of validation and error characterization of the results. Intercomparison with other existing datasets has also been carried out.